"What if this is as good as it gets?"
That's the line Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson) delivers in the movie "As Good as It Gets" as he scans the depressed faces waiting for their 50-minute hours in the psychiatrist's anteroom.
Most everyone I talk with has a Plan A for dealing with the economic meltdown. For most people I know, it is some form of hunkering down, trying to save every penny, until it blows over. That's what we are doing, more or less. Dinners out are rare. Keeping a record of our expenditures. Fewer cabs.
But what if this IS as good as it gets? Or, even more dramatically, what if we have not only not yet reached rock bottom, but when we do it is not going to start back up to where we were before? The Dow Jones. The jobs. Wall Street. Taking your kids to the ballpark? Making year-end charitable contributions that make up for not volunteering any of your time? What of all that is really gone for good?
I just read an essay called "Reset", written by Peter Karoff, an old friend. Karoff wrote for his constituency of non-profits and foundations, but the message is equally applicable to individuals, corporations, countries, and Barack Obama. I have attached his essay to the end of this post.
Playing off Rahm Emanuel's oft-quoted comment that "a crisis is a terrible thing to waste", Karoff suggests that rather than planning how to get through tough times until the status quo ante returns, what about planning as if the status quo ante is gone forever, that the new reality will be nothing like the old, and that the future is ours - or someone else's - to invent?
What if you internalize the idea that no one knows what will work or what the future will hold? What if you actually believe that the era of US global hegemony is over and that this country will have to refashion its relationships and responsibilities? What if you accept the possibility that you will never have enough money to retire and live in the manner to which you are accustomed, that you will never again earn as much as you did last year, and that your parents are not going to leave you a nest egg when they die?
What would you do differently, right now, if you believed that your life and expectations have irrevocably changed and the assumptions you have been relying on were no longer operative?
This is a leadership moment. The opportunity for exercising leadership is there for each of us, right now. It is easy to be in front of the crowd when you know where you are going. Very different when you assume it will never be the same again and the future is not only unknown, but unknowable.
How do you act in the face of an uncertain future, for yourself or for your country? What's your Plan B? How can you exercise leadership now in your personal, professional or civic? What will you do differently?
I am just as flummoxed by this as you are. But here are a few thoughts.
(1) Make hard choices. Of all the values you cherish, of all the activities you enjoy, which are essential and which can you let go? Of all the missions that your organization pursues, which are most important to you and to the people who count on you? Once you clarify your priorities, act on those values, whether it is stopping smoking or cutting out a product line or turning down work that makes you feel bad about yourself.
(2) Identify what is enduring and focus on that. For the US, it might mean remembering how this country was created and built and then opening borders even wider to allow an infusion of human energy and talent and imagination to enter just when it is needed the most. It might mean recommitting to universal quality education with a massive transfer of resources and a new conception of what it means to be a teacher and what it means to go to school, if need be sacrificing health care reform in the short run but creating a generation of young people who will figure it out later. We can learn much from the charter experiments that are being run within and parallel to the failing public school system. It might mean suspending disbelief about Hamas and being a real honest broker in the Middle East, using both carrots and sticks to get the Palestinian Authority, Israel, and Hamas to give up their fantasies and get on with the hard work of living peacefully side-by-side.
(3)Identify and then begin to close the gap between what you say you believe in and how you behave. (As I get older, I learn more about what I really believe in by watching what I do rather than listening to what I say.) Buy the hybrid car. Eat what Michael Pollan calls "real food". Join Facebook and re-connect with people you say you care about. Don't agree to be on a team at your firm unless it reflects the diversity you believe in.
(4) Run experiments, lots of them. Try out kooky-sounding ways of giving life to what you believe in, like the Indian eco-tour Tom Friedman wrote about in today's NYTimes. Organize your neighborhood on behlaf of something, anything, that you care about. Ahem, start a blog. A failed experiment is a learning opportunity and may move the ball forward just as far as a successful one. Test your own boundaries and tolerances physically, emotionally, and intellectually and test those of your family, your organization, and your public officials as well.
(4) Hold on to your optimism in the face of uncertainty, but temper it with realism. That is the only way to change the world...or yourself. Pessimism and naivete are the enemies of transformation.
Reset: The New Name of the Game
By Peter Karoff
“There will not be an economic ‘recovery’ – everything is going to be ‘reset.’” This comment from a very smart TPI client, spoken three weeks ago, was the first time I had heard the term ‘reset.’ Since then that word, and others like fundamental, and transformational, are being used by economists, business leaders, commentators and government leaders to indicate that “what is going on” is a huge disruption of business as usual for the American, and the global economy. Disruption is the term used when entrepreneurs introduce their innovations and in the process disrupt/destroy existing business models/industries. This disruption, however, was not of any entrepreneurial vision or design, but has been thrust upon us with astonishing vengeance.
President Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, was quoted as saying “never waste the opportunity that a crisis brings to the table.” The question then is whether we can use this crisis as a kind of jujitsu that lands us as a society in a better place.
Philanthropy is contingent on the ebb and flow of individual, family and corporate wealth, and the nonprofit sector is dependent on philanthropy, government resources, and earned income. What will a major reset of philanthropy’s fundamentals look like, and what should the actors in this massive Third Sector – more than 8% of GNP – do to turn it in ways that are positive?
In 2005 in The Atlantic Monthly, Jonathan Rauch wrote an article entitled Seeing Around Corners. The article dealt with how “we might learn to anticipate the kinds of events that lie ahead, and where to look for interventions that might work.” In my interview with John Abele, the co-founder of Boston Scientific, in The World We Want book, John talks about the experience of using ‘parallel tracks’ to overcome the ‘body of gods’ that fiercely resisted the introduction of less invasive surgery into the medical care system, which today seems almost incomprehensible when those procedures have become normative. I think some of the answers lie in exactly these ideas – seeing around corners – running parallel tracks – and overcoming the resident body of gods. And perhaps even more relevant – Peter Senge wrote this – “We have no idea the power we have to create the world anew.”
So far, the chorus of concern emanating from the field has had some predictable themes. Nationwide, foundations and other major donors, with assets declined 20% to 40%, are struggling with how to 1) do no harm, 2) stand up and be counted at a time when it is important to do so, and 3) be responsible to their fiduciary responsibilities. Nonprofit institutions and organizations, reeling under the impact of reduced income from all sources, are trying to figure out how to maintain mission critical programs and services with less. While difficult, and painful, these steps don’t go far enough.
A plan for a nonprofit based on the assumption that revenue will recover from the same sources to pre-crisis levels is very different from a plan that acknowledges there may never be such a recovery. A plan that is based on a foundation’s assets returning to previous levels is very different than one that assumes what we have today is what we have. A plan that only makes adjustments, even big ones, to the status quo, and does not transform how one goes about doing the work, is one of diminishing returns.
What else could be done now? Here are the elements on my short list:
Deal with, and acknowledge fear – the deer-in-the-headlight kind of fear that freezes intelligent response. Talk about it, stare it down.
A clean slate – sweep everything that you do now off the table. Take a deep breath and step way back and assume nothing exists except a blurry vision. In essence, it is as though you are starting from scratch. Reinvent the way you pay for, and do the work.
Look around the corner. Exercise your moral imagination. Make wild scenarios. Do complete end runs around the prevailing best practices – create multiple parallel tracks. As Barry Dym, the director of The Institute of Nonprofit Management and Leadership put it – “Shift the paradigm from loss to gain, from preservation to creation.”
Reassess your resources, especially those you have not valued enough. Think networks, contacts, the power of convening and access that you, your colleagues and board have. Make those calls you haven’t made in years, pull out all the stops – be shameless in the use of your cache to further the work.
Forget about going it alone. Subsume your ego. Collaborate and cost-share on a scale that was previously unimaginable. Cross domains, tear down silos between what you do and others with whom you had never imagined sharing services, and jointly serving the needs of your community of interest.
Put endowment capital to work. Make mission-based investing integral to program. Think hard about whether spending down is actually a capital investment in renewed sustainability.
Recruit new talent. Leap on the sea-change shift in attitude the financial meltdown is having on young people. The best and the brightest are no longer looking to Wall Street. This could be the biggest opportunity the nonprofit field has ever had to add great human resources.
Realize that the most influential ‘body of gods’ that need to be overcome, in addition to funders and government policy makers may be the ‘best practices’ with the field itself, or your board, the staff, and within you! Resist to your core – “that won’t work here” and “we tried that before” and “we never do that.”
Grit your teeth. This is going to be hard. Thousands of marginal nonprofit organizations will not exist eighteen months from now. Funders need to be objective, honest, and caring. Nonprofit boards need to be the same.
Renew your vows. The passion you feel, or once felt, for the work that you do, is central to the exercise of creative moral imagination. The centrality of philanthropy to the making of a better world is the heart and soul of why you are an actor on this stage. Make a poem of it.
Will the above better prepare you for a ‘reset?’ Will the field come through renewed and stronger? I think it is a fair beginning.
Peter Karoff is the founder of The Philanthropic Initiative (TPI) and author of The World We Want – New Dimensions of Philanthropy and Social Change) AltaMira Press (2006)
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
The Dangers of Leadership
For better or worse, the current crisis is a terrific leadership learning laboratory. But first, check out David Leonhardt's column in Wednesday's NY Times today. He does a much better job than I did last week of laying out the spend-or-save dilemma. The headline? Spend to save. Lots of homey examples. The one I like the best is to buy a seltzer-making machine.
Back to the dangers of leadership. Both Obama and Geithner are trying to level with their constituencies, to tell hard truths: (1) vengeance is less important that getting us out of this mess; (2) we don't have the foggiest idea what will work, neither does anyone else, but we are making our best guess, will run thoughtful experiments, and will closely and publicly monitor how they are working and not hesitate to make changers if necessary; and (3) if we can't get some people who we don't like very much to play with us (Republicans on the Hill, Wall Street folks whose greed was the proximate cause of the meltdown, and vulture investors who could make fortunes out of other people's misery) there is no chance for a recovery any time soon.
The push back has been enormous. See Maureen Dowd (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/opinion/11dowd.html?ref=opinion) and the lead editorial in Wednesday's Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/opinion/11wed1.html?ref=opinion) today. We want simplicity in the face of complexity, clarity in the face of ambiguity, and unbridled confidence from authority regardless of its intellectual honesty.
Don't you have to love Joe Biden? He cannot stop telling uncomfortable truths. Early in the Presidential campaign he got in a lot of trouble for saying that Obama was the kind of clean cut African-American that people could vote for. He was right, of course, but he was not the right person to say it. Then a couple of days ago, he said that the Obama recovery plan had a 70% chance of working (even that might be optimistic). But we don't want our authorities to tell us that what they are proposing has a 30% chance of failure, even if it does!
What I really worry about is that poor Tim Geithner, by all accounts a smart and decent fellow, is in no position to carry the water he has to carry. Between his Wall Street lineage, his culpability for not anticipating while he was at the NY Fed the mess he is trying to fix, his youth, and his own tax problems we will just not tolerate tough messages from him, the way we will from his boss, in whom we have invested enormously. As my friend and former colleague Glenn Loury has so brilliantly written, the speaker has content. Will we ever listen to Tim Geithner when he is telling us what we need to hear rather than what we want to hear?
Back to the dangers of leadership. Both Obama and Geithner are trying to level with their constituencies, to tell hard truths: (1) vengeance is less important that getting us out of this mess; (2) we don't have the foggiest idea what will work, neither does anyone else, but we are making our best guess, will run thoughtful experiments, and will closely and publicly monitor how they are working and not hesitate to make changers if necessary; and (3) if we can't get some people who we don't like very much to play with us (Republicans on the Hill, Wall Street folks whose greed was the proximate cause of the meltdown, and vulture investors who could make fortunes out of other people's misery) there is no chance for a recovery any time soon.
The push back has been enormous. See Maureen Dowd (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/opinion/11dowd.html?ref=opinion) and the lead editorial in Wednesday's Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/opinion/11wed1.html?ref=opinion) today. We want simplicity in the face of complexity, clarity in the face of ambiguity, and unbridled confidence from authority regardless of its intellectual honesty.
Don't you have to love Joe Biden? He cannot stop telling uncomfortable truths. Early in the Presidential campaign he got in a lot of trouble for saying that Obama was the kind of clean cut African-American that people could vote for. He was right, of course, but he was not the right person to say it. Then a couple of days ago, he said that the Obama recovery plan had a 70% chance of working (even that might be optimistic). But we don't want our authorities to tell us that what they are proposing has a 30% chance of failure, even if it does!
What I really worry about is that poor Tim Geithner, by all accounts a smart and decent fellow, is in no position to carry the water he has to carry. Between his Wall Street lineage, his culpability for not anticipating while he was at the NY Fed the mess he is trying to fix, his youth, and his own tax problems we will just not tolerate tough messages from him, the way we will from his boss, in whom we have invested enormously. As my friend and former colleague Glenn Loury has so brilliantly written, the speaker has content. Will we ever listen to Tim Geithner when he is telling us what we need to hear rather than what we want to hear?
Saturday, February 7, 2009
My Piece of the Mess, Part II
I do want to be a good citizen.
I am old enough to remember JFK's challenge to "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." While I think "country" is a rather arbitrary boundary - think family, neighborhood, community, or world - I take what he said seriously. I remember thinking about what he said when, about a year later, I signed up to register voters in the South during a summer while I was in Law School only to be called in by the Dean (the only time I talked with him in my three years there) and told not to go because it would hurt my future career. Impressionable and immature as I was, I am embarrassed to say, I took his advice.
I try to do the little things that make me feel like a contributor and not just a bloodsucking taker. We donate an appropriate tithe to charity. I buy those funny-looking energy-saving bulbs. I donate time on a couple of non-profit Boards. I fill up the sink when shaving, rather than let the water keep running. I run around turning off lights. I usually tip generously. Occasionally, but only occasionally, I even do pro bono what I otherwise get paid to do.
But now it is different. What is a good citizen to do in these times? Do I save money in a bank so that they can - but probably won't - make more loans? Do I go out and spend so those restaurants and retailers can make it through and my dollars help fuel the recovery? Do I volunteer time helping those much worse off than me? Do I write my Congressperson asking for a raise in taxes that I can probably afford? Do I give back my Social Security check to reduce the national debt or help keep the Social Security system solvent? Do I fly only on US airlines? The economists, even the micro-economists who should know about this stuff, seem without good guidance or at least a clear consensus.
If I had really big cohones, I would take a chunk of our accessible cash and buy some more stock. That might help the confidence index and the Dow and, in the end, if I live long enough, enable me to do well as well as do good. But that's a big "if".
Most everyone I know, however deeply they have been affected by the economic meltdown, have responded best as they can by hunkering down, trying to cut back expenses, save what they can if they can (not putting dollar bills under the pillow, but getting close to that), and hoping that it will all blow over.
I'm really confused. What would have us JFK do? What are you doing?
I am old enough to remember JFK's challenge to "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." While I think "country" is a rather arbitrary boundary - think family, neighborhood, community, or world - I take what he said seriously. I remember thinking about what he said when, about a year later, I signed up to register voters in the South during a summer while I was in Law School only to be called in by the Dean (the only time I talked with him in my three years there) and told not to go because it would hurt my future career. Impressionable and immature as I was, I am embarrassed to say, I took his advice.
I try to do the little things that make me feel like a contributor and not just a bloodsucking taker. We donate an appropriate tithe to charity. I buy those funny-looking energy-saving bulbs. I donate time on a couple of non-profit Boards. I fill up the sink when shaving, rather than let the water keep running. I run around turning off lights. I usually tip generously. Occasionally, but only occasionally, I even do pro bono what I otherwise get paid to do.
But now it is different. What is a good citizen to do in these times? Do I save money in a bank so that they can - but probably won't - make more loans? Do I go out and spend so those restaurants and retailers can make it through and my dollars help fuel the recovery? Do I volunteer time helping those much worse off than me? Do I write my Congressperson asking for a raise in taxes that I can probably afford? Do I give back my Social Security check to reduce the national debt or help keep the Social Security system solvent? Do I fly only on US airlines? The economists, even the micro-economists who should know about this stuff, seem without good guidance or at least a clear consensus.
If I had really big cohones, I would take a chunk of our accessible cash and buy some more stock. That might help the confidence index and the Dow and, in the end, if I live long enough, enable me to do well as well as do good. But that's a big "if".
Most everyone I know, however deeply they have been affected by the economic meltdown, have responded best as they can by hunkering down, trying to cut back expenses, save what they can if they can (not putting dollar bills under the pillow, but getting close to that), and hoping that it will all blow over.
I'm really confused. What would have us JFK do? What are you doing?
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
My Piece of the Mess, Part I
OK, ok.
I made no millions by investing with Madoff, nor did I lose millions investing with him.
But life is pretty good. No complaints. Nice New York apartment. Wonderful healthy family. Steady work. Can pay my bills, up to now at least. What's not to like?
True, some of the business prospects I thought were very likely a few months ago have started to slip away. There's a pattern there to be sure, but there's still enough on my plate to keep me busy (that's my pathetic explanation for why no posts since January 15).
And, yes, in the last six months my retirement date has slipped about five years. Already being in my dotage, those five years are a considerable chunk of whatever I have left. But the economic turmoil that has devastated so many people has, so far, left me pretty much unscathed giving me the luxury in the current climate of trying to look at the Big Picture.
So, here's the question for today. Since I am part of the economic/social reality in this country and in this world (as are you), I must have contributed to the economic meltdown, at least in some small way. Even if most of what I do and how I behave and what I believe has had no impact, there must be something, however small, that actually helped bring this mess about. In short, what's my piece of the mess?
The purpose of this inquiry is not self-flagellation. But if I could identify my piece of the mess, then I might learn something about myself, about the economy, and even about what to do about it.
Here's the best I have been able to come up with. Part of what created the mess we are in was a belief, really a fantasy, that good times would never end, that growth was a given, and that the theoretical downside risks of holding that attitude were just that, theory. Peter Schwartz, an acquaintance of mine, co-founder of Global Business Network and inventor of scenario planning, legitimized this fantasy with the 1999 publication of his book, The Long Boom.
Holding on to the silly and illogical but enormously seductive idea that our portfolio would continue to grow and that income from work would do likewise made me an enabler, a contributor to the bubble, a part of the "irrational exuberance" that Alan Greenspan warned about in December of 1996.
My piece of the mess manifested itself dramatically twice. First, about five years ago, I wrote a long e-mail to our financial advisor suggesting it was time for us to move a considerable chunk of our investments for retirement into low/no risk instruments such as Treasuries. I let him talk me out of it. I’m not angry at him, but I am furious at myself for being seduced by the illusion that the gravy train was going to go on forever and I did not want to miss out, even though I didn’t really need that kind of growth. Then, two years ago, my wife and I and dear friends from Australia decided to build a house together in Italy. The house is wonderful and has already given us much joy, but it ate up a considerable portion of those retirement savings and will be an expensive continuing drain in order to maintain it and to fly there to use it on a regular basis. I do not have the kind of self-loathing over Italy that I do over failing to move funds into Treasuries, but both of those decisions were based on greed and my own version of “irrational exuberance.”
What are the lessons? Pretty basic. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Nothing is forever. Don’t confuse want with need. Trust your gut. Investment advisors have biases and defaults just like the rest of us. And no one is going to take care of us if we don’t take care of ourselves.
Going forward, we are making a family budget for the first time ever. I am adapting to the reality that I will be working hard longer than I had hoped. And we can save much more than we thought if we put our minds to it, without affecting our daily life in a noticeable way.
So, what’s your piece of the mess? And how are you going to learn from that and adapt to a new reality?
I made no millions by investing with Madoff, nor did I lose millions investing with him.
But life is pretty good. No complaints. Nice New York apartment. Wonderful healthy family. Steady work. Can pay my bills, up to now at least. What's not to like?
True, some of the business prospects I thought were very likely a few months ago have started to slip away. There's a pattern there to be sure, but there's still enough on my plate to keep me busy (that's my pathetic explanation for why no posts since January 15).
And, yes, in the last six months my retirement date has slipped about five years. Already being in my dotage, those five years are a considerable chunk of whatever I have left. But the economic turmoil that has devastated so many people has, so far, left me pretty much unscathed giving me the luxury in the current climate of trying to look at the Big Picture.
So, here's the question for today. Since I am part of the economic/social reality in this country and in this world (as are you), I must have contributed to the economic meltdown, at least in some small way. Even if most of what I do and how I behave and what I believe has had no impact, there must be something, however small, that actually helped bring this mess about. In short, what's my piece of the mess?
The purpose of this inquiry is not self-flagellation. But if I could identify my piece of the mess, then I might learn something about myself, about the economy, and even about what to do about it.
Here's the best I have been able to come up with. Part of what created the mess we are in was a belief, really a fantasy, that good times would never end, that growth was a given, and that the theoretical downside risks of holding that attitude were just that, theory. Peter Schwartz, an acquaintance of mine, co-founder of Global Business Network and inventor of scenario planning, legitimized this fantasy with the 1999 publication of his book, The Long Boom.
Holding on to the silly and illogical but enormously seductive idea that our portfolio would continue to grow and that income from work would do likewise made me an enabler, a contributor to the bubble, a part of the "irrational exuberance" that Alan Greenspan warned about in December of 1996.
My piece of the mess manifested itself dramatically twice. First, about five years ago, I wrote a long e-mail to our financial advisor suggesting it was time for us to move a considerable chunk of our investments for retirement into low/no risk instruments such as Treasuries. I let him talk me out of it. I’m not angry at him, but I am furious at myself for being seduced by the illusion that the gravy train was going to go on forever and I did not want to miss out, even though I didn’t really need that kind of growth. Then, two years ago, my wife and I and dear friends from Australia decided to build a house together in Italy. The house is wonderful and has already given us much joy, but it ate up a considerable portion of those retirement savings and will be an expensive continuing drain in order to maintain it and to fly there to use it on a regular basis. I do not have the kind of self-loathing over Italy that I do over failing to move funds into Treasuries, but both of those decisions were based on greed and my own version of “irrational exuberance.”
What are the lessons? Pretty basic. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Nothing is forever. Don’t confuse want with need. Trust your gut. Investment advisors have biases and defaults just like the rest of us. And no one is going to take care of us if we don’t take care of ourselves.
Going forward, we are making a family budget for the first time ever. I am adapting to the reality that I will be working hard longer than I had hoped. And we can save much more than we thought if we put our minds to it, without affecting our daily life in a noticeable way.
So, what’s your piece of the mess? And how are you going to learn from that and adapt to a new reality?
Thursday, January 15, 2009
In Praise of Selfishness - Part II
Besides taking care of yourself, leadership requires selfishness in another, very different way. You have to believe in what you are doing, totally committed to your purpose, absorbed by it, willing to sacrifice other important, but not as important purposes in its behalf. It is easy to confuse unappealing over-weaning ego or sheer stubbornness with the confidence and commitment that is necessary to exercise leadership and mobilize people to face up to difficult issues. But if you are not steadfast in this way, you will be easily discouraged by the resistance that you will generate and you will undermine your capacity for mobilizing others, once they sense your own ambivalence.
When we talk about commitment to purpose in our consulting and teaching, some self-effacing folks will often ask, "How can I be so sure that I am right?" or "Why is my Purpose more important than anyone else's purpose?
Our response suggests the great paradox of leadership. One the one hand, you need to be totally committed. On the other hand, and at the same time, you need to be open to the possibility that you are dead wrong. Holding two inconsistent ideas in your head at the same time is not easy. For example there was nothing wrong in itself about former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's belief that a small fighting force could over throw Saddam and manage the transition in Iraq. He got the total commitment part right. But he failed to be open to the possibility that he was wrong, which he surely was.
There will be tremendous pressures on Barak Obama to display confidence, if not certainty, that his economic stimulus plan will do the trick. If he does not appear to believe in it fully, and actually believe in it fully, no one else will. But if he fails to retain his skepticism, he is likely to miss early warning signals and contraray data that will suggest the need for mid-course corrections.
When we talk about commitment to purpose in our consulting and teaching, some self-effacing folks will often ask, "How can I be so sure that I am right?" or "Why is my Purpose more important than anyone else's purpose?
Our response suggests the great paradox of leadership. One the one hand, you need to be totally committed. On the other hand, and at the same time, you need to be open to the possibility that you are dead wrong. Holding two inconsistent ideas in your head at the same time is not easy. For example there was nothing wrong in itself about former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's belief that a small fighting force could over throw Saddam and manage the transition in Iraq. He got the total commitment part right. But he failed to be open to the possibility that he was wrong, which he surely was.
There will be tremendous pressures on Barak Obama to display confidence, if not certainty, that his economic stimulus plan will do the trick. If he does not appear to believe in it fully, and actually believe in it fully, no one else will. But if he fails to retain his skepticism, he is likely to miss early warning signals and contraray data that will suggest the need for mid-course corrections.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
In Praise of Selfishness as a Leadership Behavior - Part I
On the many friends and acquaintances who have been cut down by cancer, three good friends, two women and a man, stand out because they died fairly close in time to one another, relatively young, and sharing a way of being in the world which is pretty uncommon in my experience.
They were totally other-directed. Their satisfaction and gratification in life stemmed from the pleasure they brought to the lives of others, not to themselves. They were each known as a "people-person" with a wide network of friends and associates who they valued more than they valued themselves. They shunned attention and credit and found joy in the success of people they helped. They are the kind of folks Harold Kushner wrote about in his classic book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. They were Good People. I am well aware that a sample of three is evidence of nothing at all, but in my grieving after the third death I began to wonder whether there is a connection.
These thoughts came back to me yesterday when I read Samuel Freedman's weekly column in the New York Times on the systematic health problems of Methodist pastors.
People, like clergy, who are unusually other-directed have a difficult time taking care of themselves. And they have a difficult time letting anyone else take care of them. They are much better at giving than receiving. But for most people life is not always easy. And, for people exercising leadership, life is fraught with difficulty and danger. Living that way takes a toll physically, emotionally and mentally.
And in our work with people trying to exercise leadership all over the globe and in all kinds of situations, we often find that they have a hard time paying enough attention to their own basic needs.
Think of this continuum. At one end are people who see the world and live their lives only through their own lenses and are incapable or unwilling to see how it looks to anyone else. You tell them a story and their response is to tell you one about themselves. They are the center of the universe and the rest of the world revolves around them. Next are people who are focused primarily on meeting their own wants. Their satisfaction in life comes from satisfying their desires. They often conflate - or confuse - needs and wants and justify their acquisitions or their indulgences in the language of necessity rather than desire. If we think of those in category one as The Self-Absorbs, we think of these folks as The Merely Selfish. They think of themselves first, but not all the time. Neither of these folks think very much about trying to exercise leadership on behalf of a purpose that goes beyond their own individual aggrandizement.
Then there are people who are just self-absorbed enough to make taking care of themselves a high priority, even though they spend a lot of time and energy in the service of others. They try to exercise leadership, and take risks in doing so, but not without allocating time and resources to anchoring and preparing themselves physically, emotionally, and mentally. They are The Self-Carers.
Finally, there are those on the far end, like my three dear friends, who treat taking care of themselves as diversionary self-indulgence, taking them away from their purpose in life, rather than preparing them for longevity and sustainability. They are The Selfless.
Being selfless is no virtue. It gives away power to others who can make your life satisfying or not without you having a say. It forces you to suppress your normal human needs for affection, recognition, and identity. And it often results in your neglecting to take care of yourself in more mundane ways: eating well, getting enough sleep, and exercise.
In this vein, I was struck by the criticism of President-elect Obama for taking a family vacation at a plush house in Hawaii. Ridiculous. He is about to begin the world's most difficult job at an unusually challenging moment in history. I want him to be as rested as he can, as physically fit as possible, and as connected to his family as he has ever been before he takes on the really tough issues that lie ahead. And we all remember how Bill Clinton worked and partied to the point of exhaustion in the period between his election and his first few months in office, and the many missteps he made during that time.
When you are exercising leadership, trying to help people deal with difficult issues, being selfish enough to meet your own physical and emotional needs, to prepare yourself to operate well under stress, to be able to withstand the criticism and push back you will receive, is a noble effort. If you, or Barak Obama, scrimps on that work, you are likely to make mistakes and misjudgments in your leadership initiatives as well.
They were totally other-directed. Their satisfaction and gratification in life stemmed from the pleasure they brought to the lives of others, not to themselves. They were each known as a "people-person" with a wide network of friends and associates who they valued more than they valued themselves. They shunned attention and credit and found joy in the success of people they helped. They are the kind of folks Harold Kushner wrote about in his classic book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. They were Good People. I am well aware that a sample of three is evidence of nothing at all, but in my grieving after the third death I began to wonder whether there is a connection.
These thoughts came back to me yesterday when I read Samuel Freedman's weekly column in the New York Times on the systematic health problems of Methodist pastors.
People, like clergy, who are unusually other-directed have a difficult time taking care of themselves. And they have a difficult time letting anyone else take care of them. They are much better at giving than receiving. But for most people life is not always easy. And, for people exercising leadership, life is fraught with difficulty and danger. Living that way takes a toll physically, emotionally and mentally.
And in our work with people trying to exercise leadership all over the globe and in all kinds of situations, we often find that they have a hard time paying enough attention to their own basic needs.
Think of this continuum. At one end are people who see the world and live their lives only through their own lenses and are incapable or unwilling to see how it looks to anyone else. You tell them a story and their response is to tell you one about themselves. They are the center of the universe and the rest of the world revolves around them. Next are people who are focused primarily on meeting their own wants. Their satisfaction in life comes from satisfying their desires. They often conflate - or confuse - needs and wants and justify their acquisitions or their indulgences in the language of necessity rather than desire. If we think of those in category one as The Self-Absorbs, we think of these folks as The Merely Selfish. They think of themselves first, but not all the time. Neither of these folks think very much about trying to exercise leadership on behalf of a purpose that goes beyond their own individual aggrandizement.
Then there are people who are just self-absorbed enough to make taking care of themselves a high priority, even though they spend a lot of time and energy in the service of others. They try to exercise leadership, and take risks in doing so, but not without allocating time and resources to anchoring and preparing themselves physically, emotionally, and mentally. They are The Self-Carers.
Finally, there are those on the far end, like my three dear friends, who treat taking care of themselves as diversionary self-indulgence, taking them away from their purpose in life, rather than preparing them for longevity and sustainability. They are The Selfless.
Being selfless is no virtue. It gives away power to others who can make your life satisfying or not without you having a say. It forces you to suppress your normal human needs for affection, recognition, and identity. And it often results in your neglecting to take care of yourself in more mundane ways: eating well, getting enough sleep, and exercise.
In this vein, I was struck by the criticism of President-elect Obama for taking a family vacation at a plush house in Hawaii. Ridiculous. He is about to begin the world's most difficult job at an unusually challenging moment in history. I want him to be as rested as he can, as physically fit as possible, and as connected to his family as he has ever been before he takes on the really tough issues that lie ahead. And we all remember how Bill Clinton worked and partied to the point of exhaustion in the period between his election and his first few months in office, and the many missteps he made during that time.
When you are exercising leadership, trying to help people deal with difficult issues, being selfish enough to meet your own physical and emotional needs, to prepare yourself to operate well under stress, to be able to withstand the criticism and push back you will receive, is a noble effort. If you, or Barak Obama, scrimps on that work, you are likely to make mistakes and misjudgments in your leadership initiatives as well.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Leadership and Experiments
In David Sanger's News Analysis in the NYT on Saturday, an anonymous person, described by Sanger as "a member of the Obama foreign policy team" was quoted as saying "there's going to be no time for experimentation."
Wrong, both on the substance and on the mindset.
In both foreign policy and the domestic economy, the country is facing new challenges. Iraq is not Afghanistan. Iran is not North Korea. This economic turndown is not like the recession of the 1980s or the Great Depression of the 1930s. Obama and his team can learn from the mistakes that were made in all those prior situations, but fighting the last war, literally and figuratively, is a profound mistake. Each of these challenges is new. The current repertoire is not adequate to the task. Anyone who thinks they know the solution ought to be barred from the meetings. This country needs to run a series of experiments, such as engaging with the enemies abroad, putting more pressure on Israel to give their politicians the courage to do what they should have been doing long ago, and trying a whole bunch of ideas to deal with the most intractable problems at home, education as well as the economy, carefully monitoring them, making mid-course corrections when needed, or abandoning them wholesale when they appear to be going awry.
The series of bailout initiatives are a case-in-point. If Paulson and Bernanke look they do not know what they are doing, it is because they do not know what they are doing. They have never been here before. All we can ask of them is that they make their best guess at the moment, run experiments, and see how they go. That's what they have been doing and the strongest argument for Geithner at Treasury is that he is a smart guy who does not seem flustered by having to change the strategy again and again until he gets it right. Similarly, Clinton at State is a good idea precisely because she has very little experience making foreign policy and has the potential to create a formidable team with the President. She's a risk worth taking, because the upside could be so high.
We forget that half of FDR's New Deal experiments were utter failures. So he kept coming up with new ones, tinkering at the margins or making big U-turns until itseemed to be working.
The danger is that the policymakers will succumb to the public pressure, exacerbated by the media, to pretend that they know the right path. Rather, what they should be doing, is helping us to adjust to the reality that they don't have the foggiest idea what will work, but that they will keep trying, and learning, and applying that learning until they get it right.
Larry Summers had it as reported in the in the Wall Street Journal that fixing the economy was as much an emotional issues as a policy issue.
As a consequence, policymakers have to help us adapt to the new realities: there are no quick fixes; some people will take losses, especially in the short run; and that the government will be running experiments, some of which will fail, but that the people in charge will keep trying until they get it right.
Playing the blame game will not do anyone any good. What is needed is a spirit of experimentation, the thrill of adventure, going out into uncharted waters, knowing that there will be bumps along the way. The policymakers need support, tolerance, and a long view. The best members of the Obama team will be those folks who are willing to take some risks, try out measures that have not been proven in the past, and be open to think of failed experiments as learning opportunities and not marginalization opportunities.
That, President-elect Obama, is the change we need.
Wrong, both on the substance and on the mindset.
In both foreign policy and the domestic economy, the country is facing new challenges. Iraq is not Afghanistan. Iran is not North Korea. This economic turndown is not like the recession of the 1980s or the Great Depression of the 1930s. Obama and his team can learn from the mistakes that were made in all those prior situations, but fighting the last war, literally and figuratively, is a profound mistake. Each of these challenges is new. The current repertoire is not adequate to the task. Anyone who thinks they know the solution ought to be barred from the meetings. This country needs to run a series of experiments, such as engaging with the enemies abroad, putting more pressure on Israel to give their politicians the courage to do what they should have been doing long ago, and trying a whole bunch of ideas to deal with the most intractable problems at home, education as well as the economy, carefully monitoring them, making mid-course corrections when needed, or abandoning them wholesale when they appear to be going awry.
The series of bailout initiatives are a case-in-point. If Paulson and Bernanke look they do not know what they are doing, it is because they do not know what they are doing. They have never been here before. All we can ask of them is that they make their best guess at the moment, run experiments, and see how they go. That's what they have been doing and the strongest argument for Geithner at Treasury is that he is a smart guy who does not seem flustered by having to change the strategy again and again until he gets it right. Similarly, Clinton at State is a good idea precisely because she has very little experience making foreign policy and has the potential to create a formidable team with the President. She's a risk worth taking, because the upside could be so high.
We forget that half of FDR's New Deal experiments were utter failures. So he kept coming up with new ones, tinkering at the margins or making big U-turns until itseemed to be working.
The danger is that the policymakers will succumb to the public pressure, exacerbated by the media, to pretend that they know the right path. Rather, what they should be doing, is helping us to adjust to the reality that they don't have the foggiest idea what will work, but that they will keep trying, and learning, and applying that learning until they get it right.
Larry Summers had it as reported in the in the Wall Street Journal that fixing the economy was as much an emotional issues as a policy issue.
As a consequence, policymakers have to help us adapt to the new realities: there are no quick fixes; some people will take losses, especially in the short run; and that the government will be running experiments, some of which will fail, but that the people in charge will keep trying until they get it right.
Playing the blame game will not do anyone any good. What is needed is a spirit of experimentation, the thrill of adventure, going out into uncharted waters, knowing that there will be bumps along the way. The policymakers need support, tolerance, and a long view. The best members of the Obama team will be those folks who are willing to take some risks, try out measures that have not been proven in the past, and be open to think of failed experiments as learning opportunities and not marginalization opportunities.
That, President-elect Obama, is the change we need.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
